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Now Showing – Cinefex 144

Batten down the hatches! Close the airlocks! The new issue of Cinefex has reached the summit, and the view from the afterlife is spine-tingling!

Forgive me for mixing my metaphors, but when you’re faced with a quartet of movies as varied as these, you run out of potatoes real quick. Not potatoes. Words.

The first film on the Cinefex 144 call sheet is The Martian, Ridley Scott’s space odyssey about a stranded astronaut with a passion for, yes, growing potatoes. Next up – and up, and up, and up – is Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest, based on true events in which the members of a mountain-climbing expedition eat potatoes and meet with tragedy and terror (I may be wrong about the potatoes).

The third film showcased in Cinefex 144 is In the Heart of the Sea. Ron Howard directs Chris Hemsworth in this true and tragic tale about the attack on the 19th century whaling ship Essex by a monstrously large and aggressive potato. Sorry, sperm whale. Our fourth and final article explores the spine-chilling delights of Guillermo del Toro’s supernatural Gothic romance Crimson Peak. No potatoes in this one. Pretty sure about that.

I recognize that superheroes, monsters and spaceships are our bread and butter here at Cinefex, but I do enjoy the occasional exploration of other visual effects-created phenomena. Issue 144 is our travelogue issue, with forays to the summit of Mount Everest, to the desert terrain of Mars, to the waters off the coast of 19th century Nantucket, and to the decrepit mansions of Victorian-era New York. I came out of it as exhilarated as Anthony Bourdain during Sweeps Week (without having to eat the weird food).

What unites these four very different films – Everest, The Martian, In the Heart of the Sea and Crimson Peak – is that they are all “people” stories. Three are about people struggling against Nature, whether it takes the form of Earth’s tallest peak, a formidable and hostile planet, or a massive whale. The fourth is the story of one person against the supernatural. But the struggle is the same, and can be boiled down to this most basic theme: “Something – the mountain, the planet, the whale, the ghost – wants to eat me, but I will fight to survive.”

I had a headstart on the issue, having written In the Heart of the Sea several months ago, when it was originally slated for a spring 2015 release. The film – and hopefully, my article, complete with wonderful commentary from Ron Howard – will be worth the wait. I thoroughly enjoyed writing about Ridley Scott’s The Martian – loved the book and the movie, and loved the backstory, as well (geeky unknown author self-publishes e-book and makes good).

Joe Fordham did exhaustive research for his fascinating story on Everest, Baltasar Kormákur’s feature, with an A-list cast, about the well-documented 1996 disaster on the mountain, in which eight climbers died. Joe also got to return to the singular world of Guillermo del Toro for the Gothic-horror-inspired Crimson Peak. We love Guillermo, and from what we hear, the feeling is mutual.

I really hope you enjoy reading issue 144 as much as we did writing it. It’s going to have photographs and everything!